Everyone knows that boy/girl twins can’t identical right? Wrong!

[Tincytot]

Here is my Friday night rant as a mum of twins teenagers who still gets asked if they are identical when the girl/boy twins are standing right in front of them, looking not one bit alike let alone identical. Plus they’re different sexes!

typical conversation-
“oh you have twins, what are they?”
”a boy and a girl”
“lovely, are they identical?”
”no they’re a boy and a girl”
”yeah but are they identical?”

🙄🙄

My friend has twins and when they were babies she was asked more than once, in turn, how old each of them are, as if the person asking is somehow expecting them to be different ages

She’s also been told “they’re not really twins anymore now are they?” once they started school. Like the more they grew up and became more individual people the less ‘twins’ they were. People are v odd.

I used to work with somone who had non identicle twin
girls
We had a patient on the ward that had Boy / girl twin babies
My collegue asked if they were identicle 💁

The disdain comes in because when you are a twin parent you answer these same questions over and over again, sometimes multiple times in one day, so what may be a non-event for you is probably the 1000th time we have had to smile and nod at a stranger who thinks they're being original when we didn't even invite the conversation in the first place. By the 99th time someone asks you a dumb question, your tolerance is quite low.

The worst ones are the ones who stopped me to tell me they'd rather die than have twins. That happened several times when I had newborns and was already at the end of my tether.

Husband has a work colleague who refuses to call his b/g twins, twins. They are just two children who were born at the same time.

Um no … I have twins thanks, so well aware. Had all these questions myself and it’s still a non-event.

Um that's great for you. I think you're telling fibs though.

Because people are insinuating that it's a stupid thing to say, because didn't we all go to school and learn genetics and know this that and the other, so surely it would occur that if one child is male and the other is female...blah blah....

And it's not that deep a thought process. It's a quick observation and almost reflex question of "oh, twins... are they identical?'

I would say that even now, with my (boy/girl) twins who barely look related, let alone identical, I still get asked if they are a couple of times a year.

As opposed to a couple of times an hour when they were babies and strangers just repeatedly approach you.

I’m not really sure what this has to do with people asking if two people who are standing in front of them look alike. 😂

I’ve already wrote how so in the thread

You don’t think someone with ovaries is truly a female? Someone with turner syndrome is missing the Y chromosome so they develop as female.
I’m not sure what you mean by I dont think Turner syndrome is compatible with life so we aren't taking about a scenario where (once) identical twins would grow up as male and female alongside each other ??
If you mean people don’t survey with turner syndrome then you’re wrong, people survive with it.

That sounds like my DH. We never refer to them as twins ourselves.

Haha. My username, which has always been my username, should be a clue for you here, as should my post history. Weird how you think someone is lying about their life just because they don’t have the same opinion as you. Very weird.

Turner syndrome girls grow up to be short and have mild learning disabilities plus they are infertile. But as the smallest chromosome, missing a Y chromosome doesn't lead to a fatal anomaly.
Fun fact: the second smallest chromosome is no 21 which is why an extra copy is also not incompatible with life.

Thank you @Health47 and @drspouse for the info. I had got this wrong and sorry for confusing the thread. I knew someone whose Turner syndrome baby was stillborn and I made an assumption that I should have checked. (In the same group there was someone whose baby had Triploidy - 3 sets of chromosomes - I had incorrectly conflated the compatibility point.)

I would edit my post but am too late. Sorry all.

Turner syndrome is compatible with life. Individuals who have it have almost the same life expectancy as everyone else, although they do have increased risks of some health issues I think.

So twins where one has Turner syndrome couldn’t be described as identical, but are still monozygotic twins I assume. And I guess that’s the only situation where monozygotic and identical aren’t synonymous.

Nope you can also have 'mirror image twins'. Still same sex but say one has a dimple on the right side of the face, the other will have on their left.

In rare,very rare cases one of the twins has their internal organs all on the other sides of their body.

You’re right, I saw a medical programme which was on a couple of nights ago and the woman had Turner Syndrome which had resulted in a massive Aorta which had to be replaced.

Yes, I have friends who are mirror-image twins. As well as some other differences, One is right handed and one left handed.

I guess their DNA would have to be slightly different for that to be the case?

So all identical twins are monozygotic, but not all monozygotic twins are identical. 🤔

I didn’t know this until a bit later in life, can’t remember when but maybe late teens. We had lots of twins in our year for some reason and they all looked identical to me.

I’ve had it once with mine! I literally said no, one’s a boy and one’s a girl. I didn’t know what else to say! They don’t even look similar. My boy is a little tank with white skin and my girl is tiny with brown skin (they’re mixed race). But if I didn’t have twins I’d probs ask too without thinking coz I’m terrible at small talk.

My brother and I look weirdly alike (obviously less so now brother has a beard). If we’d been twins, we wouldn’t have looked identical as little ones, but once we were teens it would have been very disconcerting.

To those saying it’s not possible for B/G twins to be identical - you’re wrong! It’s very rare but possible, and happens when the female twin has a condition call Turner Syndrome.

This has been covered about six times on the thread already. They’d be monozygotic but NOT identical, genetically or physically. XY and XO.